


Hymns of Struggle

by PipesFlowForeverandEver



Series: Hymns of Struggle [1]
Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Body Horror, Got some personal headcanons for Sammy that would be spoilery to add, Male-Female Friendship, Mild and repeated reference to vomit and blood, Minor Coarse language, Mystery, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Sammy survived Bendy, two messed up people just try to make it in this godforsaken place
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-04 17:44:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 20,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12776151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PipesFlowForeverandEver/pseuds/PipesFlowForeverandEver
Summary: What's there to live for after you die? You struggle to exist- to make it all the way to your Lord- and all that greets you is Hell wrapped through your own flesh. Purgatory must be real after all. I pray and I pray and finally, something comes. If only I knew what to do with it.  -An empathetic attempt to comprehend and console Sammy Lawrence and other residents of the studio.





	1. A Death Wish

**Author's Note:**

> I only recently got an AO3 account, so I also have this fic posted on fanfiction.net. If you're worried about the authenticity of this posting, feel free to contact my fanfiction.net account of the same name and I'll verify for you that this work is not stolen.
> 
> This fanfic contains graphic depictions of violence and its aftermath as well as depictions of hallucinations and re-experiencing trauma. I do want to assure, however, that this fic attempts to realistically bring together two beings with deep emotional troubles in a way that does not romanticize abuse, but still acknowledges wrongdoings and the trauma of others' actions. This fic is an unnamed AU in which Henry experiences chapter 1-3 canon but the studio is left as is or nearly as is for however long it's been until the OC appears.
> 
> I mostly write this for both your enjoyment and mine, but comments still brighten my day if you have any thoughts.
> 
> (Further notes: Chapter 8 has been edited significantly. It is stated how at the end of said chapter for those who have read it before 12/15/17.)
> 
> (1/28/18: **There has been a significant detail change to Chapter 1 as well as other chapters that mention the detail.** I will state it explicitly at the end of Chapter 1 for those who have read this before. Another minor but notable change has been added to Chapter 8, again described at the end of that particular chapter.)
> 
> (3/11/18: I HAVE FAN ART FROM A LOVELY FRIEND! It's spoilery so I added links to the end notes of the fic <3)
> 
> (3/29/18: EVEN MORE ART?????? IM DYIN. I've decided that just in case anything can be perceived as a spoiler, I will make them available at the end the work.)
> 
> (5/18/18: I'm just gonna keep an updated list at the end of this work and all the others of all the spectacular fanart you wonderful people keep making me that I'll never stop screaming about. I'll still be posting links in the notes of chapters as new art is made, but it makes sense to keep a big list somewhere!)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him shall never perish, but have everlasting life."_ \- John 3:16

Her skin clammed up as she reached for the dim, glistening light at the end of the dark hallway, the only doorknob that seemed to work in this godforsaken place. She trembled with anxiety and excitement, not finding what she was looking for but ready as hell to get out since she knew that now. The last thought she had was "the door can't be locked, I was just-"

And then she fell.

The floorboards cracked like thunder and splintered and cut all over her legs as they gave way, leading the way down to whatever waited below. Another loud crack followed, as she had landed on her abdomen. And almost immediately after, a primal, guttural scream. So much noise, but it seemed to echo into nothing, to no one.

A spotlight from the broken roof shined over the writhing figure. The world it touched was a sickly yellow, aged paper, but it didn't stray far from her. She started to lift herself from her ribs to her side, spasming as if she was moving her stomach out of her mouth. Her hand reached out and it attempted to lift her upright, the other unwilling to stop from holding herself. She had to leave. She knew no one was here to help, close enough to hear her call. She would soon wish for that to be the truth.

Another scream rang out and she lost her breath as something gripped her ankle and began to drag her, a thud sounding out as she fell back on her broken ribs. Her fingers scratched into the wood with their nails. She didn't know what was happening, but she needed it to stop; she was already fighting the siren call of unconsciousness. Being lead out of the light, her hand blindly hit a table leg and she held on for dear life. It dragged with her a little…and then hesitation. That cold, inhuman touch left finally her leg. She breathed in relief, but didn't let go, in case the machinery started up again. It must be some sort of abandoned production line, since there were all those strange, giant pipes above.

Just as she started to heave herself away from whatever was taking her, she saw something come for her hand and violently begin to pry her fingers off the table leg. It felt like- oh God, there's no way.

Other fingers.

Something came out of her mouth- she couldn't tell what- and she slammed the thing with her fist as hard as she could. It...squished in her touch, but did not waver and eventually was victorious. Feeling her palm in its' grasp, she was lifted up by the wrist and came face to face with what had to be another nightmare.

It dropped her from this height to the floor just as suddenly- almost as if it was a punishment for staring- and she felt her hands being forced behind her once she doubled over in pain. She felt rope graze her skin. She didn't know why, but she was fighting for her life and by God this wasn't going to be how it ends. There was a swift, almost instinctive reaction as she kicked it as hard as she could muster. A voice- a soft "ugh!" of surprise, and it sent her flying back.

The spotlight was over her yet again as it began to approach, looming over, its' skin glimmering like a puddle near a streetlamp in the early morning. She scrambled up to her feet and backwards, clutching a broken piece of wood that had joined her earlier plummet.

"Please!" she begged. It had never taken so much effort to heave a single word out of her throat. The figure stood still in the dark, soundless.

"Please!"

She was sobbing and shrieking by the time it started to approach once again, all her strength necessary to keep from dropping to the ground in hysteria. She knew it meant to kill her, she knew, and she knew she'd need to do anything to get out alive. Mucus filled her throat and nose as tears dripped from her cheeks, falling into her mouth and on the floor.

 _"PLEASE, I DON'T WANT TO HURT YOU!"_ The plea came without any forethought and she abruptly collapsed to her knees, making noises of agony and terror that went beyond words.

It strode into the light, a tall man with an inhuman smile- even through her burning tears she could see this was a monster- a tower of ink with pants and an unmoving expression, a stiff mask of a face she surely never wanted to see again.

Then it stood there, tilting its head. She didn't consciously think, but a shiver of agony pierced her, unknowing of what this moment meant, what this moment would lead to.

There was a long pause, every second of silence cutting into her soul.

And it just knelt down and picked her up.

She thrust her arms at him, begging for her life, beating into something that leaked a reeking liquid onto her hands no matter where she hit. There seemed to be no affect, but one could have noticed she was weakening in fervor and strength with every swing. The cries started to quiet as they left further and further down into the shadows and away from her only hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As of 1/28/18, I have decided that Sammy never hit the OC. This is counterintuitive to the purpose of this fic, played no significance, and makes decisions made later to seem to be condoning abuse. Thankfully I didn't put much thought into it in the first place, so extremely little in the actual text is different; it does, however, much better reflect the sentiment I have in writing this fic.


	2. Baptism

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“’For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’”_ -Jeremiah 29:11

A smiling face with baring teeth, betraying the blurred line between joy and menace. It stared until it bored holes through sanity, denied any truths of the world outside the inky walls; staring back only crumbled the ground under one’s feet until they leapt into the welcoming arms of hallucination. Brief comfort, but then it pinned one to the wall and made them watch as their own fear reshaped the world. 

The grin would then stretch to the back of its head, new lips stitched together by the dripping of its shadowy flesh. 

**Drip.**

**Drip.**

**Drip.**

Until it filled the room and their lungs with itself. 

What would one do if they faced this? They would fight the embrace, of course.

But what if time after time they lost, panic encompassing their every decision, their every thought? 

It kept happening, it kept happening.

They died every day, unable to resist the faces, those teasing smiles that urged them to fall back in.

But why would they always allow the fall to begin with?

If one needed to be here so many times, there must be a reason. What were they missing? What were they missing?

It had chosen to reach out to them. It chose them. He chose them. He chose _THEM._

…

…

_“What am I missing, my lord?"_

And that is how sheep accept the divine embrace of Bendy.


	3. Reveries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Taste and see that the LORD is good. Blessed is the one who takes refuge in him."_ \- Psalm 34:8

She felt her chest imploding. Painful screams weren't enough to drown the blood in her ears anymore. This was it. This was it.

 _"Oh mom_ …I couldn't…I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."

The faces of people she loved lingered over her.

A smile almost curved her cheeks at how dumb and pointless some of the memories were. Her dad buying her a McDonald's ice cream cone. Her first two friends fighting over who would get to be her _best_ friend as if she couldn't have two at once. The color of the leaves outside the window of her first college class. Not things she'd point out herself…so stupid…but it was soothing anyway. She was glad her life was like that; it pushed away the regret that lead to...

A wheeze crept from inside. A pulse of red flickered and the faces were gone.

"No…no…please, don't leave…please don't leave…I need you…I don't want to be alone…please…p-"

The tang of blood and bile filled her mouth and she felt a numbness sweep over her body like a breeze that plucks the leaves from trees one by one. The last thing she felt was a brush against her hand, one last comfort, one last assurance that someone was with her.

"Take care of me, Lord."

_He will._

And with that, she let go.

* * *

Why?

The woman stared blankly upward, seeing nothing. It had been this way since he had laid her down in that spot.

Was this a test? Was this a gift? …Why? Why did it happen, why like this? What happened?

Many thoughts clamored his mind as he paced restlessly back and forth, side to side, but he was soon distracted by an unbearable comprehension that scratched and clawed its way forward. It'd been so long since he saw someone, someone with flesh. There was someone else, such a long time ago, but he was gone for good. He only brought trouble anyway. After all that sacrifice, that man could just leave while _he_ …!

His hands clenched forcefully when they came into view. Sometimes, he was almost not repulsed to see them. But remembering…seeing right in front of him…a _body_ …that made it crueler.

The rigid gaze of his mask still somehow betrayed a look of revile as it shifted to observe her, watching in fascination and sorrow at the violent spasms that seemed to pulse too powerfully for her figure to contain. This was like nothing he'd ever seen before.

Could he remember? What was it like to have a body? He knew he had one once, but so much eluded him now, suffocated the memory and sensation of who he was. His bones drowned in ink now and had washed away everything he used to be- No. The thought of it being anything but atonement alarmed him and was quickly pushed aside before it poisoned his faith. He was different now. He needed to be. That was his lord's grace, his mercy.

He saw a flash. He looked down and saw ink bubble from his arms and cascade over the rest of his body. Yelling, begging, pain.

Just as suddenly, something seized him from his torment. He realized he was staring at his hands again. Nothing had happened. Or maybe it had all over again. A sound rang through the air, like the croak of a frog singing amid a night as thick as velvet. It lulled him and soon he was kneeling over her, listening for more.

"I couldn't…I'm sorry…I'm so sorry…I'm so sorry." Her voice was hoarse and labored, as if speaking alone was killing her. Maybe it was. But what did she have to be sorry for? This person- this soul- had made no mistake if she came to look for her savior. Maybe she didn't know he was so close to her.

He crooked his neck to the side. Just beyond, a pentagram. The likeliness of his lord protected it- unwavering, virtuous, omnipresent.

"No…please…"

He only now noticed he was moving toward what he saw, enveloping his entire conscious until she sang again.

"Don't leave…please don't leave…"

There was a sharp, unintentional turn of his upper body in response to this request. It was…compelling. Hesitant, he allowed himself to come back over her, looming his head over hers.

"Please don't leave…I need you…"

Why did…she _need_ him?

"I don't want to be alone," the woman answered, "Please…p-"

The pleading ceased once she started choking on something that had risen from her punctured stomach. Her mouth cried without any noise, and he saw her shakes grow weaker and weaker. He could see the ink again, crawling over his body, and then leaving him back before her.

This was like nothing he'd ever seen before…but he realized he had _felt_ it before himself.

He was so unsure, so mystified of all they were experiencing together in this fleeting moment, that he didn't know if it was a decision of instinct or consciousness.

The muscles in her palm relaxed in his gingerly touch.

"Take care of me, Lord."

Her lips let free one last breath. All the tension left in her was swept into the dust that surrounded the two beings.

"He will."


	4. Passover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“... say to those with fearful hearts, ‘Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come to save you.’"_ \- Isaiah 35:4

The world was murky and bleak. Drips could be heard in the distance falling from the pipes; the walls were decayed, peeling, and a hallway stretched ahead. It seemed to go for eternity and yet didn’t make known a single glimpse of what was ahead.  


_Sheep, sheep, sheep, it’s time for sleep…_  


A voice echoed from all around, soft like a lullaby.  


_Rest your head, it’s time for bed…_  


She existed without feeling. Where was she? She didn’t remember. She didn’t care.  


_In the morning, you may wake…_  


Something moved.  


_…Or in the morning, you’ll be dead._  


A shadow of a man flickered in and out of sight like a movie projection aimed into her eyes. Closer and closer, closer and closer; and just as it had shown its tattered face, it was gone.

* * *

Something spewed from her mouth. She almost choked on it all and its bitter mark on her tongue had her gagging. Everything was blurry and her eyes stung.  


“How…interesting.”  


A turn of the head soon revealed there was something very stiff supporting it upright. Another quick discovery was that there wouldn’t be a way to rub her sore temples anytime soon. She thrashed, or at least tried, but the ropes stayed tight. He wasn’t going to make that mistake twice. It had been a long time, but he remembered that much about his last encounter with an outsider.  


There was a pathetic, elongated moment where he observed her quiver and shake while she was tied to that post. Like…a heap of wet papers in the wind. So much effort, but they just wouldn’t break away. It made him chuckle, just for a moment, but it couldn’t hide his anguish.  


She eventually had to stop. She was so tired. Her skull banged back against the wood behind it one last time, scrunched-up eyes prickling from crying so much for so long. There was hardly room for her lungs. The fuzzy light in her peripheral view grew brighter and she heard a door creak. A light shuffle, taking all the time it wanted to haunt her. Louder, louder, louder…here. Right by her side. She snapped her eyes shut. No more, please no more.  


“Well.”  


She bit her lip so hard to keep from screaming that she could taste blood.  


“You’re very…fortunate. I suppose you already know that.” Absolutely not.  


“It seems like you may…” She noticed the hatred in his voice, the venom. “…Have his favor.”  


She sniveled. She felt this man- this thing- staring at her, watching her every move. It was excruciating, even more so than-  


Her stomach?  


Her eyes shot open and saw her clothes were covered with something sable and sticky. It was all over her skin. She felt it in her hair. She saw it in her wounds. A throbbing ache came from her gut, but she no longer felt the stab there before nor the hot rush that filled her body and numbed it.  


She was alive. She was ALIVE. The drop in her stomach at this thought was almost enough to make up for its loss of pain. She shouldn’t be alive. She couldn’t understand a damn thing since she had closed the first door behind her, but she could understand that.  


“So much for sacrifice.”  


Still there was refusal to meet his gaze, even as he hissed in her ear. It emanated disgust, loathing. Her heart beat so hard that its pulse twanged her wrists, flooded her ears. She wasn’t sure what she did to slight this hellish creature, and it terrified her.

* * *

After all that, nothing.  


He had gone through all that trouble to bring the intruder to Bendy. He found her. He fought her. He carried her to his meticulously fashioned room of sacrament, tied her up and lit the candles. He saw the visions- his _own_ skin again- as he stayed by her side while she took her dying breaths, waiting for his master to retrieve the offering. To set him free. And eventually, he saw this would be her own saving grace as well. The woman was already a pitiful sight when she arrived. Her bones broken, her breathing tortured. He glimpsed her even before then and saw she was still unfitting to survive among the others. And the only thing you can do once you enter the studio is to try to survive.  


Even so, she was about to give- ready to give- his lord the most exalted, selfless sacrifice conceivable. He had so much hope in the brief moment they anticipated his marvelous presence together.  


And then he decided to let her live on the way she was.  


It was infuriating.  


He couldn’t blame his lord. He couldn’t. He- he worked in ways that could never be fully understood. _BUT!_  


There was a whimper from her direction as a growl rumbled his throat ever so slightly.  


But Bendy let this woman live in his own domain with her body as is- a _slight_ to his grace, his power over everyone who dwelled this place, the _ONLY PRICE_ for his mercy- while his most faithful servant was treated like a wretch.  


He felt his teeth grit and his lips curl, so he quickly recomposed. He knew his lord was still watching.  


Still…it was a show of some kind from his lord Bendy nonetheless, his great omnipotence over the ever-thinning line between life and death in these halls. The shepherd had to admit that he didn’t know- never had seen- anyone live again without first drowning in the puddles.  


She spat up ink again.  


He supposed he could be wrong after all.  


But her state…this was not only unusual; it was unprecedented, and it set his mind racing. His entire, blighted existence was to apprehend his master and his ways. Just as he felt he had climbed high enough to grasp it, he reached too far and lost grip. The plummet threw his heart into his throat.  


The questions from before his lord’s summoning floated back with more and more urgency. Was this a punishment for the audacity to think he could finally comprehend his lord? Was this a blessing he didn’t yet see, as unbearable as she made him feel? Did her broken state not please him, like offering a sick calf at the alter? Was it abhorrence of the shepherd, or was it _her_ fault? Was he to kill her himself? But then why would Bendy not only leave her but also _restore_ her, something that he had never deemed anyone- even his prophet- to be deserving of? If she wasn’t a sacrifice…what was she for?  


And suddenly- “I’m sorry.”  


It took him off guard. It was a feeble voice, shaken with the events that had taken place. Raspy, despondent, and scared. She didn’t know what she was apologizing for, but he didn’t know that.  


His gaze lingered down upon her again. She was finally facing him, wide-eyed and teary, expecting something- anything. Please, just anything!  


There was nothing that he could say with certainty to reply to that with, and it terrified him.


	5. The Scientist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”_ – 1 Corinthians 13:12

“I don’t- I-…I don’t think I understand.”  


The two of them hadn’t left the room of sacrament for what must have been hours. Her spine ached, and she could feel her wrists starting to rub raw against the rope. It was only now she decided- no, she had decided long ago. It was only now that she had the gall to speak since her last, futile attempt. She had apologized and then, nothing. They only watched…watched everything she did. Everything. Either the delirium of fear or an eventual acceptance of the nonsensical had her questioning if the cartoon face was hiding eyes or if _it_ was seeing all along. The hosting body shifted occasionally, but she was always the focal point; it had never wavered this whole time. There was an established tempo where they lifted their hands or arms in front of them with a faint murmur; the gap between them seemed to place her in a frame.  


The sight of this being, the unavoidable truth they represented, was cognitively impossible.  


It overwhelmed her mind and body, at first commanding her to cry- still did off and on- but eventually she dwelled into a sense of final bravery, that she was going to die here anyway. May as well die without so many questions.  


Vulnerability. She had never felt so defenseless, out of control by stating a fact. She did not understand, and could not without the help of the very thing that plagued her and cleanly skinned the comfort she had in her reality. Calling upon the face of insanity was her only option.  


After that, a heavy, unnatural silence swarmed the air, muting her will to try again.  


“What do you mean?”  


So sudden that it knocked her voice back to life with a gasp. It was a subdued, icy sound they made. Gentle by nature and yet with no intent of kindness nor comfort, even for someone dwelling her misery. As quiet as things were, its whisper sliced to the soul.  


“I- I mean….” What did she mean? “I…”  


They tilted their neck. The calm amid this flurry of horror had allowed opportunity to ponder her situation for the first time since the floorboards fell beneath her. The thing…they were covered in something, the same something that seemed to ooze over her clothes and make rivers in the cracks of the decaying wood underneath her feet. They shined like a lake under an unclouded moon even though the quivering candlelight was so dim. The teeth of their mask were jaggedly punched out, but what was behind it was unrecognizable.  


They leaned in with either agitation or curiosity at her pauses. Probably both. The candle most between she and them suddenly flickered more brightly and curved away from this being, but just as quickly dimmed once more. Then again- bloomed, bent halfway, and withered back to almost nothing. A yellow blush was softly laid upon the hand that clasped on their knee for support, which was lowering to her level. Knuckles twitched in effort. A small shake of the cloth underneath- the ring finger tapping with anxiety, over and over. Tension trailed their arm up to their shoulders, which lifted and dropped delicately, hardly brushing an aura of dust that sprinkled the air. A highlight struck through the mask’s crude window and exposed a parting of lips.  


Bloom. Bend. Wither.  


Bloom. Bend. Wither.  


She…Oh god.  


They were _alive._  


Her own life was struck like a match, enveloped with vigor. The minute rhythms before her blared over their shared memories. Her instincts ignored who this someone was. They’re a person. _A person._  


Whatever she intended to ask was gone forever. Through all the obscurity that swallowed them, the most human question burned into her heart and skimmed over her tongue before she could censor herself.  


“Do you have a name?”


	6. The Siren

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.”_ \- Romans 12:5

Who was he?

He knew who he was today. The shepherd, the prophet. The one who recognized that salvation was within the grasp of any of the lost sheep who wished for it. He knew that when the ink flooded beyond the stairwells and into everyone’s veins, they had become of the same blood as their lord. His duty was to thank Bendy for this mercy, for saving him from the sweltering nothingness and for providing hope…hope that he could be who he was before.

But who did he used to be?

_Do you have a name?_

His demeanor of provocation fragmented into uncertainty. He felt his brow rise and his mouth gape. 

…He could not remember his name. 

In his soul he tightly held onto grains that said he had one; he had a name sometime before all this. The rest eluded him, an entire beach of memory pulled into an ocean by the tide of ink one spec of sand at a time. What he held in his hands was all he could find, and they were so few. A terror sank through him. He never noticed before how little he had left of the person he needed to keep. 

Corporality was not the only piece of himself that dissolved in the black brine of souls.

The ocean. He detested the remnants that still soaked his mind. That was where his own soul laid to rest every time his useless form fell apart, until Bendy allowed him to dwell his lord’s path again. There were endless wails and murmurs of a thousand-fold swimming through emptiness. _“Like fish in a bowl.”_ He heard them, he listened…he heeded. After all, they were no worse than he, sinner of sinners. He wanted them to understand the salvation Bendy had put before each of them. 

It had been a very long time since he was in the puddles last; he recalled with chills when his lord punished him. And yet, even after Bendy rejected the sheep offered to him…his prophet called upon him to provide the strength to reform again so he may do his will. Amid the curses and anguish of the ungrateful, he would sing to their savior and encourage his brethren to do the same.

_He will set us free!_

A simple melody of compassion, courage, and clarity. It offered everything the sufferers craved to cleanse their wounds of wickedness. He hoped…he trusted that if all who needed Bendy’s grace reached for him, they would finally be saved. So simple a task. So miraculous in return.

And yet no one would be of the choir. Everyone was enveloped in their own greedy woe.

A lonely existence that maddened every drop of humanity left in the gutters of his heart. 

He had never thought about his solitude. After all, his heart now overflowed like a chalice of a bridegroom before they wed. His lord kept blessing with his love even as the wine cascaded over the rim and gushed over his hands and onto the floor, until he filled the room with himself.

…And yet…and yet…

Grief and confusion whirled over him, a spinning transparency emerging from the lighthouse on his shore that searched for answers where there were none. 

* * *

She noticed the struggle- her captor shuddering and their fear proving contagious, radiating between them. Her expression shifted to say something but was withheld, unsure if the creature would be interrupted; it seemed they were asking themselves her question. It felt best not to interfere but there was anxiety in waiting for regret to emerge. 

There wasn’t a conscious awareness of it, but a name to her meant more than what to call them- it meant there could be something within them to grasp. A desperate hope that seethed against everything she had faith in. She needed them. Fuck, she needed them, and they’re the one she wanted to be away from the most. 

Their reticence had brought back the memories of them together under the spotlight.

They could set her free; if not of the hell around them but then of the one inside of her. The sight of them still sent adrenaline through her nerves and she couldn’t forget what happened to her- but it would bring relief, somehow less dread as their shadow rested over her from above. Maybe a belief there would be no more harm to her- valid or not, still a welcome belief. Even if she couldn’t forgive.

All she wanted was to stop being scared, to allow her heart to ease just for a moment, if not for good then at least until she died here. 

Maybe there was a reason she saw the monster and the physical pain had ceased. She felt so certain she was dying, even so. Maybe they could explain it to her. She didn’t even think of escape yet; she didn’t even think of why she came, what she searched for so urgently. So inconsiderately in the face of her demise, she just wanted to know. She hoped. She hoped. Maybe. 

Any alternatives would result in her spiritual end. 

* * *

These revelations of their lives had only been conceived within a few seconds.

Never had this happened. Never had anyone thought of him. Never had he wanted to know about himself like that before. Never had he tried to know, either. Even refracted by the tinted lenses of odium- revealing his corruption to be so absolute that she doubted he could be worthy of a name…-

She was the first to ask him who he used to be.

But soon, matters of mortality overcame history. His heart raced as he comprehended…he was not among the puddles. His lord rejected his offering and hadn’t rightfully incurred his wrath as he had done before. He was still here, left with the sheep.

He loosened the ropes behind her back.

“It…does not matter now. And it won’t until the day he sets us free.” 

Maybe his calls weren’t in vain after all. 


	7. Through the Red Sea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“The people remained at a distance, while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was.”_ \- Exodus 20:21

“I…I…”

Her wrists came forward in front of her, similar in the manner this person had obsessed with their arms the past few hours.

Free.

…Free?

The word addressed two perplexities at once. The first being…was she really free?! Wait, wait- what even just happened? She entered the studio only for it to come to life before her very eyes. It swallowed her, and soon she was found by…them. They battled to take her and succeeded, followed only by the memory of a flickering man opening the curtain to a play of vomit and relief. After all that, was she just…released from this?

The second seemed to disagree: 

_Until the day he sets us free._

“Who?” she asked.

The watery man appeared reluctant to answer.

“All in due time.” Smooth and airy, more for his own thoughts than her own, a drawn-out mumble lost and resigned to forces beyond himself. It was in sharp contrast to a louder, demanding inquiry that echoed the room. 

“Can you stand?”

With great reluctance, she moved her wary gape from him in order to center herself. A throaty groan signaled her start; unsteady arms tossed to the ground to lift her body from the floor. Most would have responded to the visual cues by offering aid, but not he. Eventually she stood before him, knees bent and ready to collapse, an arm leaning fully against the beam to which she has been tied. It appears restoring life does not mean to restore physical capacities, he noted. 

“Come with me.”

Without even a gesture or a look, he trudged towards the gaping hallway that had held the shadow man of her dying nightmare. Confoundment widened every opening of her face. Panic. Realization her turmoil wasn’t over. 

“I...! I need to leave! I need to-”

“If you don’t come with me-” He interrupted her excuses as a schoolmaster scolds a child preparing to cup a brown recluse in their hands. “-you won’t be permitted to exist as you are for another minute.”

After that, the chamber was audience only to the dripping of pipes. She never noticed the pentagram that had encompassed her for the entirety of their stay.

* * *

Fatigue in every step, she followed him into the void, fingers and palms clinging to the wall for support. Keeping up with him, even as slow as he was, was an ordeal. There was doubt if the pulse she felt against her fingertips was just her own. But so far, this was the same as the first room of the studio, only filtered through extreme shadow-

A stench bit at her nose and she saw something move. Just up ahead, ink gushed from the pipes overhead and swamped the floor. A gigantic statue with the same face as the rest of the studio proudly oversaw the incubus in front of them as the mass grew and bubbled like a cancer eating the corridor inside out. The shepherd was unphased and walked closer and closer, about to enter this convulsing, living shade. The soft thump in her fingers became faster.

She felt herself begin to hyperventilate. 

* * *

He looked over his shoulder once he noticed the harmony of footsteps was broken. The pivot came in time to see her dusky figure slide down the wall, literally letting herself go. 

“I can’t! I can’t…!”

Hair clung to her sweaty skin and caught in the saliva of her mouth. 

“Please don’t make me go there…I don’t…I…” Pleas to avoid the inevitable.

He was puzzled…and unbearably annoyed. “Why?”

She gaped for air like she was drowning, giving no comprehensible reply. His cycling between obligation and acrimony for her was proving to be so aggravatingly short. He sighed beneath the refuge of his mask. His lord must have blessed his kind with vigor beyond that of the untouched that roamed into this perdition by choice. So weak, so pathetic, even after Bendy bestowed upon her his own power and life.

Impatience overcame his virtues for struggle. Faint hiccups and sobs rang in his ears as she hung over his back, placed neither gently nor with intent to be thrown, torso once again aching from the pressure. 

He was unaware it was less a fault in her strength of body than it was one of her mind as they waded into the ink. Her whispers turned to screams. 

* * *

It took a long time for the sight of the throbbing flow of ink to leave her; eventually it was settled into a still pool that only passed waves where he had just stepped, the immediate fear of where they were sliding into a quiet trepidation of what was ahead. And yet, her breathing was still profoundly troubled.

She had been kidnapped when they found her before. _Kidnapped._ It was something that seemed out of the realm of possibility, as alien as the moving cardboard cutouts from the halls above. And now that same stranger was carrying her, a crow clasping an insect in its claws but not yet pecking, resigned to take flight with the worm in its grasp. They had not said to where or why, and she couldn’t muster the might in her tongue to ask. Doubtlessly, the volatility of it all was her biggest enemy, her greatest distress. 

She…did not trust the person to be rational. Considering they only stared at her in silence for hours up until these past moments, a sound mind seemed absent- or at least subjugated by this situation. Their actions may not be as meticulously intentional as surmised before, but driven by anxiety and horror…like her. That was her hunch. She hoped it to be the truth; otherwise, the resulting sureness left to them would leave her even more unsure of her own fate. 

Her pupils lowered and saw the glossy, oily flesh they had. They seemed to be a blobby shell of someone- once human or eternally not- that wanted to leave as much as she. Leaving _what_ was cast into the unknown. 

She feared what made them this way and the likelihood that it surrounded her now.

Descending further into the enigma, she asked herself…what was he? -…Oh. 

The question itself revealed the vagueness that clouded her judgements. Gender had never emerged in her reflections until now. The constant threat of death- conceivably worse- probably had a hand in that. And well, she conceded that gender was pretty pointless anyway. Wait no- it’s very important! But well, just to the individual. But it also means a lot socially, even if it shouldn’t necessarily…-

He noticed her breathing steady; her heart was beating so forcefully through him that its waning was obvious. It felt worthy of comment, and yet he had none. Her presence was awkward enough to suffocate any. Resuscitation, however, was unfortunately not avoidable.

“Hey…”

This was softer, perhaps even more serene than her voiced proved capable of before. Assisted by the blood flowing to her brain held upside down, she was now sedated by her own inquisitiveness, her own divulgence of thought and whimsy. It was remarkable, and likely a result of her own nervous system straining to keep her alive by avoiding yet another costly spike of adrenaline and panic where it would be utterly useless. Her own readiness to be swept into conversations with herself had always been a rival of anesthesia, but who had known it was enough to confidently probe the face of nightmares? The questions and asides came slow but without careful planning, merely wind from her lips. It was favorable that her brain made it too exhausting to care, as the mere idea this would have made her sober self fall over in flabbergast. 

“Who are you? I mean…who should I think of you as?”

It probably made more sense in her head than it did to him as a question. 

He began but never finished. “I am…”and they hung in the air like clothing to dry. Having never been _asked_ to explain before rather than simply doing so opportunistically left him reasonably hesitant, and so he found he preferred to do so on his own volition. That was not his current intention. However, the still wet steps of his pantlegs dragging ink from the loch onto the upcoming bare, hardwood panels weren’t satisfying enough to engage the silence. 

“It’s…okay if you don’t have a name.” 

This tone- the utter, idiotic guilelessness-!

It stabbed through him like broken glass and left him arrested mid-step. He shortly recomposed and jerked his knees back in their cadence, unsure if the forcefulness in his next declarations were to prove certainty to her or himself. 

“I am his prophet. I am he who is- “ Too forceful, and he audibly choked on his words, just for a second. “-blessed to sing the hymns to our lord.”

The concept of gender was indeed very stimulating, but this was much too ominous for her to pay attention to it any longer. The gratification normally attained by answering her own questions was completely engulfed by the dread freshly placed upon her shoulders.

“I…I think there’s a lot we need to talk about,” she stuttered wearily, naively. 

“I suppose there must be,” he curtly answered the sheep as he continued to carry them both gracelessly, cumbersomely away. Their figures obscured and fuzzed into one shortly before evaporating into the gloom ahead. 


	8. Magi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”_ – Matthew 7:7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has been edited twice since its first posting. The first time was to fit more canotical aspects, while the second was a friend informing me that something I implied wasn't clear in intention. I'll make it clear for you guys at the end of the chapter.

_Slither._

He saw several meters ahead at the end of the room a true Peter Pan shadow, a black stain in the corner of his sight that retreated the moment he tried to place it. Normally he wouldn’t think much of it- they were merely the vermin of the pipes- but a weight over his spine had relayed a sharp warning. 

She’d have to learn to deal with the searchers sometime- or rather, he would have to deal with the aftermath of their introduction- but he didn’t have the tolerance for that today. Maybe never. His exasperation grew every time she reacted to more of his reality…her new home. He wondered if she had accepted that yet or if this too would be his responsibility. He tried and failed not to resent the position Bendy chose for him, a swish of guilt and displeasure that couldn’t mix but kept striving to. 

That resignation, however, created a problem. Past where the searcher roamed was the only path to his retreat. 

The only _physical_ path. 

At the sharp bend also awaited the visage of his savior, intricate lines drawn behind it like rays of divine light. Ah, he had forgotten about that pentagram. Dragging himself step by step until his round, misshapen feet rested before the portal, he bowed as best he could and still balance without dropping her or himself to the floor. Admittedly he was unsure if Bendy truly used his likeliness to supervise his realm, but the prophet believed the gesture itself to be proper respect regardless. Nothing could be too frivolous if it was done in worship. He was then free to carefully pick it up with barely one hand to spare, leaving the star vacant. 

Briefly, he wondered what would happen to her. Things he carried in always seemed to emerge alongside- no damage, no harm, not even a scrape. But all of them had been washed in the first tide of ink. She was not. Malice consumed him. 

“Ah well.” 

She must have been hallucinating because she could swear she saw his legs press through a solid wall.

* * *

It was a chamber heavily swamped in shadow, her own flattened against the wall and dancing with candlelight. 

It was beautiful. It was horrid. 

She must have lost focus from the exhaustion, much to her dismay. They were walking and now she was here. An expletive slit her throat. She’ll be dead in no time if this is how she her body reacts to this kind of stress. 

There would surely be more to come, ready to take her for good. 

Such certainties had to be shoved into the dark, at least for now. Not now, not now. Life outside her own pinched the fuse before it burned to self-destruction. 

She didn’t know when he’d be back. When did she hear the steps? Her most recent memory was a shuffle and a dizzy panorama up to the ceiling as she laid on the floor. The rotting face of a demon diminished to a new moon of oil as he turned his head away to leave. 

This may be the only opportunity to be alone for the rest of her life. Wisdom froze her in place and sped time; she knew this was precious…but not how. 

Subconsciously, the first logical step was to observe. With her senses lagging to catch up with her intellect, the painting before her was abstract long before it sharpened into realism. 

She was in an enclosed room. She lifted her head to the candle, up on a cabinet- a weird table with short walls attached to the top. A sketching table? There was a name for it, definitely. Now the candle, it was ribbed; it curved in and out in a strange but familiar fashion. This angle was unhelpful. Once sitting up, there was-

Her lower eyelids were forced upward by grimacing cheeks. She smelled her hoodie before she saw it, crusty with bodily fluids and drying ink. Regretfully, it was the only proper layer between her and the musty air. “I hope he comes back with clean clothes,” she pondered spitefully. It was less a retort of her captor and more of an attempt to forget the circumstances under which the cloth was soiled. Then she remembered there’s likely another shirt to wear. 

…in her car, outside. 

Her fist pounded at her thigh in frustration; she was upset but then finally distinguished it was pointless to ponder the fantasy of clean clothes any longer, grunting a sigh. She only brought in-... another revelation, already. 

A big one. A potential savior. 

A slap hit her jean pocket, met with a solid thump. Her hands scratched so fast to grip her smartphone in her bare palm that she pushed it onto floor. Her breath was heavy with excitement rather than fear for the first time. 

A red light tinged the room and painted her face, spelling “Verizon.” She had been opportunistically agitated at the lengthy boot-up before, but today her heart ached as she held air in her throat. 

The loudest exhalation to leave her yet. 

_6%_ , it read. 

…What now? With such few, dear minutes left to her, what was she to do? 

Her thumbs gripped the screen not in use but in unbelief. 

…

She had to know. 

_5%._

Her password was inputted, and she urgently tapped the Facebook icon. 

_Search: Gabriel Vahl_

_4%._

The first suggestion was a page, not a person. “Come Home, Gabby!” That was it; she knew it well. A quick scan seemed to show no change in itself- same pictures of a young boy with scruffy brown hair and shiny black eyes. This description was listed on the “MISSING” poster that served as the page’s cover photo. 

Updates. Were there updates? 

_3%._

Her fingerprint slid back and forth up and down, fruitlessly trying to make real what wasn’t there. 

None. 

The right arm took a mind of its own; it gripped the phone beyond necessary for utility and there was a spark that constricted down to her fingers. Before she knew it, she had whipped the phone far out of reach. A gleeful, plump face crashed through glass and then…a thick splash. 

Oh no. Oh _no no NO NO NO!_

There was newfound force as she threw herself over to the window in the wall as she had her to her phone seconds before. The outrage that consumed her to do so now boiled in her stomach as she peered down, witnessing the last corner of the phone dip into a black pool that entrapped the office like the moat of a castle. 

_2%_ \- and then a spark accompanied by a broken black and white image, a nonsensical last shriek of its demise. A final _plunk_ , never to resurface. 

She had cried before- often since she got here- but this time. This time was different. 

* * *

It was a blank, pointless chant of footfalls. 

Honestly, there was no strategy in his escape. He told himself there was but knew it was a lie, scolding himself. Yet he kept going. 

It was all…so much. Too much. Overwhelming, suffocating. 

He dumped her as soon as possible to try to avoid the anxiety clogging inside him. It proved to be no relief at all, and he even thought of her more as the distance between them swelled. 

There wasn’t a location that was safe from the monsters of the halls. He knew that well. Where he had picked for her was precarious, a feather teetering on the edge of a table, waiting for wind to blow it over the cliff. It wasn’t even the safest place he had; he refused her his own sanctuary, so eager to be rid of her that he couldn’t be bothered to solve his own puzzle as he had done before.

And there he left her alone, a decision made by the urges of his apprehensions. 

Passions circled when addressing her presence; he was unaware it was shock that stung his behaviors, that it begged for a period of mayhem and took it regardless. He didn’t want to deal with her anymore. From start to finish, there always seemed to be certainty of how he felt of her- but what he felt fluctuated so terribly often. 

Moments before he had assigned himself a role and was already absconding from it. It haunted him, apparitions that warped around his body and blemished his existence. 

_“I don’t want to hurt you.”_

The mystification as the person before him fell to her knees in total surrender; a pause but not a hesitation in his acceptance. 

_“I need you.”_

The touch of her hand stilling, prompting him to leave her alone among the inscriptions so she may accept their salvation for them both. The otherworldly rain dripping black from the wooden sky. A brief marvel of Bendy staggering towards the lamb before suddenly stepping out of existence.

_“Do you have a name?”_

The mortification as her glassy eyes judged him, unnerving him like never before, challenging his solace. 

_“I can’t.”_

The downward curl in his lips as she sat helpless, quietly bawling. The burden on his shoulders and they crossed the threshold into the river. The thump rippling through him, unsure which heart it was. 

_“It’s okay if you don’t have a name.”_

And again, these were the words that stopped him in his aimless path. He had emerged into what must have been the surface-level entrance and stared at the door. The door. It was so, tauntingly close. It was an orifice of a dragon born of black magic and childish veracities; it would greedily eat anything that stepped through its teeth and never let it out, not even in death. Even the worst of behemoths excreted the remains of its digestion. There was no such dignity for those who wandered the entrails of the studio- half dissolved scraps unable to break through the final barrier to whatever lay beyond expiry. 

He observed that the hole in front of the front door had finished healing, not even a scab where it gashed open. It was still unsettling to witness after all these years. 

The heart of the dragon pulsed overhead, veins of pipes carrying the lustrous blood of void to the ink machine. 

This was holy ground. He came here only if there was something his lord had delivered to his people, a blessing of the outside for them to keep as they bided for release. There usually weren’t such small gaps between his visits; he glimpsed her here but was delayed in his retrieval as she fled to the trap- just before he could grip the hood of her squatty, dense cloak. 

He knew there was no such things to chaperone to the depths now, and still he came. He instinctively, reflexively searched for the signs of his lord, and yet he was resigned to accept righteous fury for breaking the commandment. 

Sinfully, he stayed. 

It was still so surreal to have received this lamb. It didn’t happen often, and the last one that he had in his fold was long, long past. His lord had taken for himself the wandering sheep time after time before the prophet could gently escort them to their fate instead; he had heard their helpless bleats as Bendy absolved them of their mortality. It was a heavenly ritual that his prophet knew was not for others to witness, leaving him unable to explain what it was that Bendy did to these chosen few. And it was never that the ink demon simply caressed the soul instead of quickly stringing a claw over its gullet, washing the blood over its hide and his own. 

She…she…

_“I think there’s a lot we need to talk about.”_

She had no idea that there were as many questions he had for her as she for him. 

A black spot in the corner of his eye. 

He flinched backward, tripping onto a chair behind him. Fortuitously he had not fallen entirely- just simply toppled a chair and was coerced into balance, putting him in the vulnerable position of outstretched limbs and a chest bare and inviting to his lord’s talons. It had happened enough times that he didn’t correct himself but simply stayed put for the retribution. 

Until he saw it wasn’t his lord at all. 

A lump. Its texture was splattered with the slick blood of the studio, but there were islands among them showing a dull, coarse material. 

Still fighting instinctive immobility, he leaned forward in caution, flattening himself like a fox finding a freshly killed rabbit shortly after its own tail was snipped off in a hunter’s trap. There was a glimmer of metal that poked through the stains. He took a step. It was something he knew. Recognition required a short intermission as this was an uncommon sight. It was a zipper. 

Tension was released, knowing he was indeed summoned to retrieve manna of the outside. 

* * *

Pie-cut eyes guarded the door, scrutinizing any who loitered down the lengthy hall. The cutout faced him, intimidating but permissive of his entry. 

He had returned. He dreaded to feel regret in doing so- knew he likely would- but he had not left her for good. Somehow, he should not. 

There was dusty, thick glass that glazed the office of someone who must have been important sometime long ago. It was ghastly with decay; the window cracked more and more with each visit, it seemed. Through the brown-yellow grime and the strobing hallway lamp, it took him a long time to notice something was very wrong. 

Bendy’s likeliness saw her first, over the disciple’s shoulder the woman stepping through the door frame to the left and behind. Sopped pant bottoms were cut from the view as she lifted her chin into the empty space of the cartoon’s vision, a small figure behind his overwhelming manifestation. She pressed something into her bosom, unknowing they both had gifts intended for one another, first tithings of union. These things would serve as both irreversible disturbances of their minds and miracles for their spirits. 

A bag hit the ground in reply to her gospel. 

“Sammy?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As of 12/15/17, the two changes are: 
> 
> 1) I have stated within the story that he picked the office to leave her despite Sammy having knowledge it is not the safest room.
> 
> 2) I have much more strongly implied that she threw her phone through the glass window in frustration. Although it'd be hilarious, it did not somehow drop from her hands through a solid plane of glass that was at least a few feet out of her reach.
> 
> Thank you for sticking with me despite this issue, and please feel free to inform me any time in the future if there are such glaring mistakes.
> 
> Changes as of 1/28/2018:
> 
> I don't...remember...giving her a flashlight? And yet I typed that? It's gone now, she only brought her phone.


	9. Kindness of a Coin Toss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.”_ \- Exodus 2:4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone that read chapter 8 before 12/15/17, please see the notes listed at the end of the previous chapter.

Blood. 

**Ink.**

Blood. 

**Ink.**

Sammy’s mouth widened only to drown. It ate him inside out. He could hear her scream. He could hear Susie scream. 

* * *

“That… _is_ your name…” Still pink, still wet eyeballs shifted in their sockets, nervous of what she felt inside her and then of what she saw ahead. Her words were steeped in mourning; for some reason she was still clinging to life. “…Right?” 

His back stayed facing away from her, tar overlapped by strips of cloth. 

“I just…that name keeps coming up everywhere. And I- I found this.” She feebly lifted a tape to show him as if he could see behind his own head. For all she knew, he did. 

The grey box slowly rested back into her stomach as an awareness was born. He was shaking. 

Oh god, what had she done?! 

“I’m- I’m SO sorry! I- I should have thought- I should have known-!” She shrunk backwards, awaiting his fury. He obviously didn’t want her to know his name or at least not to acknowledge it. He had avoided the topic like it pricked sewing needles into tongues. She was so _stupid._

She recalled her escape- consumed by grief she had forced open the office door, diving into the cancerous flow of ink only to fail to find her prized phone. It wasn’t even ankle deep. But even so, it was just…gone. 

The fear from the river eventually came back to her and she picked herself up and out. Preternaturally, most of the ink that clung to her body sunk back down to the puddle like metal shreds to a magnet. Some, however, still hung as leeches to dirty garments and bare hands. 

She kept moving forward but hadn’t gotten far when she heard his arrival, and yet this was enough searching to grasp in her hands a truth. It was his voice- definitely his voice- inscribed with a claim. _Sammy Lawrence._

It was clear now to be forbidden fruit as she and he joined paths again. Her jaw clenched. She was prepared; not sure for what, but she was prepared. 

Or so she thought. 

“Sammy?” She bit her lip, ashamed to immediately be so accustomed to the word; it was thoughtlessness awaiting rage. 

Again, unfulfilled expectations. He stood there noiselessly, refusing to respond. 

Unable. 

He kept shaking, and she finally comprehended. 

Then empathy persuaded common sense.

She gradually followed a counterclockwise path that met him at the cusp of the office wall and the pool of ink he stepped into. Instead of fleeing the spider’s web, she entangled herself further within. The light and shadow shifting as she moved, he emerged before her as a thin silhouette- a glossy, bare chest with boney arms. Maybe arms lacking bone, instead. 

If one expected the response he gave, it would be anticipated after a touch against his slimy outer crust. But no; it didn’t even provide a chance for her to step over whatever was sinking by his side. As the sole of her shoe joined him in the puddle, he finally turned. 

…And he flinched away from her, shoulders tight and ready for savagery from where she stood. A yelp echoed down the corridor, repeating his admission. 

It was a genuine, stinging dread. She could feel it. 

They stared at each other in heavy breath and emotional nakedness. Her face flushed red from tears and ire, and her muscles hardly lifted themselves anymore. His face was captive by another not his own, only willing to tease the teeth in his head as he gaped. His frame stayed tautened and trembled with reflexive agony. 

The beings smothered in black saw their sensations lapse through each other, drops of dye spreading on opposing ends of a bowl of water- two people that ached in their souls from the trials of reanimation. 

From then on, they were equals. 

* * *

Her knees bent, encompassing between her thighs a near-empty tin can smeared with goo; more of it coated her arm with a swipe to clean her face. She leaned her back against a corner and could be barely glimpsed from the few yards away in the hall where they met. 

Across was the man drooping over a chair, loose with fatigue. Even in his trauma and exhaustion he went out of his way to find her food. She disregarded the possibility it may be spoiled; a sick stomach was more welcome than a vacant one. Despite her fears of him- of this place- she was grateful. 

As this was all he had done since he found her wandering, it was obvious something deeply troubled him, maybe as much as these things troubled her. 

“…Yes,” he conceded. 

She scrunched her face, having said nothing to prompt this. “E…excuse me?” 

“That…” Even in times of uncertainty, his voice had always proven to be forward as an arrow; it wavered now with the distress of change. “That must be my name.” 

Plastered over the walls, engraved into plaques, and even labeling recordings of his own words- he had not recognized the remnants of himself scattered around him. Song sheets inscribed with his creations and identity had flown from a music stand of his existence; they only drifted as far as an office fan could stir loose papers through a bureau with no open windows. And yet he never gathered them. 

Still could not. 

It was true. These surrounding clues to the mystery of his past brought no relief; it only made him scared, scared that his humanity was so shattered that even with pieces spread before his eyes…that it still wasn’t rebuilt. Yet, his mind strained past distress and into faith. 

“Thank you, Bendy.” It was a quiet breath laced with the weight of tribulation. He did not see the woman’s confused expression slacken into worry. 

He had only briefly explained…“Bendy” to her. 

_“Bendy…”_

_“Wh-what? The character?”_

_“The…the demon…”_

And since, it continued to pour dread down her spine. 

Even so, it was wrong of her to prompt him so shortly after he seemed to endure some kind of episode, she admitted. She felt if she pressed him now it would only be more of the same he spoke in the hall- frantic and vague answers that filled her mind. One phrase among his mutterings started to harden in her heart. 

_“It’s time to believe.”_

It sounded like the hiss of a snake being stoned to death; now he was acknowledging only what was said before his quivers and murmurs, as if the name she gave possessed him and left that time blank in his memory. He had been dead silent till now, had been since he took the first step out of the ink.

“Sammy,” she restated softly, not to address him but to reaffirm the discovery. She expected him to at least nod in reply, but it wasn’t even that she received. He sat still, head bent low and arms entirely lax as they had been before. 

Her mouth skewed, embarrassed she anticipated so much. She could imagine lifechanging shock but not the release of your entire foundation of being, as must be his reality. It may have been too unkind to her survival, but this was the moment allowed herself to soften; she soundlessly promised she would be more considerate. She saw the irony in that but didn’t care. Weariness degraded that grudge, at least for now and for this. It was more for her own sanity anyway. 

And just after this promise she had realized in regret that out of all the things she needed to know, there was still one that had to be squeezed out of him immediately. 

“Sammy.” This was meant for him, sharp with concentration. He stiffened and left unsure if this was in recognition or lassitude. She pressed onward all the same. 

“There’s something I need to know from you, before I want to ask about anything else.” It was…comfort. A counselor’s tone, hoping that how it came across may distract him from whatever woe was upon him; it was a tone she conceived to lull him as best as possible into a response. She _needed_ an answer, so she pushed past tremors in her veins and voice. 

“Is that okay?” 

He lifted his head and head alone to look at her, and she soon felt the risk in giving him an option. Again, he long replied with silence. She couldn’t see a change in his face but still felt him watch her closely, looking through and over every inch of her. Then she saw his mouth open. 

“Yes.” 

Too powerful to be contained any longer, her heartache was released as it became her turn to hang her head, leaving him puzzled. This vulnerability was unfamiliar and agitated him, but he somehow knew it was important. So he waited, fixed in surprise and disturbance. 

Even so low to the ground and tilted away, her grimace was visible as it tried to sneer away tears and prime herself for the inevitable. 

“I need to know,” she began through gritting teeth, “if you’ve seen him.” 

Him? She had paused, necessitating he ponder. It left him flustered and with only one guess. “…Bendy?” 

A tear finally broke past her lashes. 

“N…no.” With great effort she tried to remained patient, hardly keeping at bay the flood of terror she now had for his single word. Even as the flame journeyed to greet dynamite, she impudently chose to endure.

“A…a boy. Ha-have you seen…a little boy?” 

His body slanted at this bizarre inquiry. 

“I-I came…I came here to find him. We haven’t-…” She was interrupted by a hiccup. “…He’s been gone for over a week, and-…”

No amount of human strength could have made her keep going. The only reason she had come to this abyss was her speculation; the remaining places to search were those of no meaning to she and the others who sought for him- no purpose and yet all that was left, as the abandoned studio was. Her hands flattened together and pressed over her lips, but they were unable to keep inside the memories, the sensations that congealed within her.

…Gabby couldn’t be here. If…if he was…

She couldn’t verbalize the hell, the torture a mere runaway would have received just for walking into a building. 

…She didn’t want to imagine the man before her being a part of it. 

No amount of human strength could accept that. 

He only knew the little information she let float into the air between him, and yet it was enough. Despite his isolation, his apathy, his ignorance of the weight her body carried with her every step she had taken out of love…he crudely understood that no matter his reply, it would shape her into someone else- the someone she’d remain to be for however long he’d know her. 

…Forever. 

“No.” 

She gasped and flung her head to look at him, stunned as he gifted her this amelioration. Almost uncomfortable with his own kindness, he sat back in his chair and slowly averted their locked sight by choosing to face away. His flat profile- now unhidden by the angle of his mask- was rounded only by ridges that breathed her liberation. 

“I have not seen another lamb wander past the gates in a very, very long time.” 

It took a few seconds before she bit her trembling lips and her eyes warped shut, still unable to keep back tears. 

A sacrificial purgatory weaved through her as vines over a rusty fence, easing her against the wall behind her back- and then even further, sliding down the edge of the doorway by her side. She twisted with the descent and her watch was led away from the mask’s callous smile until she lay on the floor, neck sloppily aligned with the entry like a guillotine. 

From there she could see the ink-encased cage that kept her before; the face of the mask now appeared again to look down upon her from afar, the ever-watching eyes of this gallery. She could read through the window a single psalm: 

**IT’S TIME TO BELIEVE**

And then she didn’t know if she could. 

She felt somehow God had let the Devil pick her instead, released from one set of chains into another. 


	10. Fellowship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.”_ – Proverbs 27:17

There was no telling how long it had been until she felt her ear scrape against the floorboards. Her new companion had gripped her left leg in both his arms, dragging her sharply backwards like the rope in a tug-o-war. A heavy groan rang in her head alongside the pain. 

She had made a mistake. She let her guard down. She had become too trusting. She shouldn’t have thought she could be even _remotely_ safe with him. She was so stupid. She-

She heard something down the hall. 

Now that her head was out of the hallway, he hastily shoved her into the nearest corner; he practically tried to squeeze her in like her body would and could melt to fit the sharp angle, but the best that was done was a tight, uncomfortable standing lean that ached her backbone. He pushed down on her toes with his feet to pin down the kicks and flails. Then one arm at a time he held her wrists. The touch that slipped past her sleeves was indescribable. 

The prophet’s cracked head came within an inch of hers to whisper-

“Stay still…You need to stay still…” 

She soon understood why, but the explanation left even more unanswered. 

As she stared at him, a sloshing noise grew louder and louder…nearing where they hid. It was rhythmic, like…walking. So compressed in this position, she had barely noticed past his open scowl that something was manifesting behind him. 

She would later be grateful to not taste ink as one of his hands moved to cover her mouth, the vibration of her yell bouncing back onto her own tongue. 

The upper half of a man- head, arms, and torso alone- dragged itself down the hall, made of ink and only ink. Remnants of itself were left in a trail of gooey clumps that dissolved into the floor within seconds. 

Harsh and strained with intent, Sammy instructed her, “Let me know if it chooses to leave or to turn around.” He felt the impression of the word “what?” upon his palm. 

Then her eyes widened even more as the monster rotated once it reached the pool and slid to confront them. 

“Around! Around!” came an urgent, muffled cry. 

Sammy shifted his body once again to cover the being from her view- its view from her. Even though she no longer fought back, he hardly lightened his pushing. It sent her in a panic to hear her spine crack as he did so; it wasn’t anything more than a noise, but it was a noise that might have been heard. She could feel the tension within him and it seeped into her, only adding to the discomfort. 

A choked gargle was heard as it came closer; it seemed to be a communication of aggression and belligerence. She fleetingly could see past the man as this beast lifted its dripping arms and a hole opened in its head- a mouth that could hardly stay open as flesh melted back into itself. 

It had seen him through the doorway. If it had seen her as well was left to be shown. 

Sammy replied to it as he often had to her; he remained as he was, not looking, not reacting- only facing ahead at the person in his clasp. 

There was something etched into his face- an expression she could not name but one that pierced her all the same. Her heart sank into her stomach when she glimpsed over his shoulder that the monster suddenly reared back. 

…and then she heard a shuffle that grew quieter and quieter. 

Soon there was nothing more than the blood in her ears. 

Relief and a harsh pulse flooded her extremities as he finally removed himself from her. Her heavy gasps for air were accompanied by his silent acknowledgment- his patience; this was only a sliver of what the prophet knew waited for her, and yet it was still so much. He had earthly fear and vulnerability wash off him long ago, but as her mortality dirtied his pristine acceptance of Bendy and his embrace…there began a symbiosis- an exchange of sensations and emotions. 

He had grown to fear for her; it was an unfamiliar and anxiety-ridden experience that he loathed to recognize. 

Even in the dark he appeared was almost inhumanly tall as he stood over her, allowing her time to recompose. Yet again, she could not to his expectations. 

“What the _hell_ was that?!” Her hands slapped the sides of her face as she loudly begged for even a hint of rationality. 

One side of his mouth stretched in agitation and she then covered her own as a child would, suddenly aware that such volume was deadly. And as he judged her, questioning his sympathy so soon after finding it, she abruptly realized what had happened- what he was doing. 

Her ungratefulness was horrific to her. 

“I…th-…” She sighed, squinting at him in weariness and shame. “…Thank you.” It felt wrong to say; the adrenaline that believed he was assaulting her was still coursing in her veins. But there was still something left to fear. 

His expression laxed only slightly at her new awareness, shifting from alarm to focus. 

“My sheep…it seems we aren’t safe here.” He already knew that; it had been ignored throughout the blinding light of cognizance up until now. 

Her brow deepened into her skin at how he addressed her, but there were more pressing matters at hand. “Wh-where-?” She couldn’t finish her sentence as she discovered in her own words that she was again at his mercy or even lack thereof. But she had no choice. 

He kept his gaze at her momentarily, but it soon went to the hall. Down the corridor, he saw no sign of the searcher nor any other. But he knew that they would come anyway like drops of rain in a cloudless sky. 

There wasn’t another pentagram nearby. 

And then- he saw lord’s blessings. He had forgotten. Sammy turned his back to her and walked to the office, filling her with dread until she saw him walking back with something decently large in his grip. Why was…he only walking back, not running? 

She didn’t know that it was mortal blood that the searchers craved, he having listened before as they surged over flesh and tried to engulf from the inside out. 

And yet very soon, this wouldn’t be the most urging thought in his mind. 

* * *

Slow footsteps followed his in what have might been a signal of mice to the cat that they came to be chased. She jumped back with a small yelp as he turned to look at her. 

“Stay close…until I tell you to stay,” he hummed. 

Her cheeks pulled back to question him, but he had already put a glistening finger over the hole in his guise as a motion of hush. She chose to comply. 

She noted he seemed…lighter. There was something. Something was in him she couldn’t place, and it made her almost as uncomfortable as what seemed to be the possibility of seeing that- that THING again. It didn’t fit what she saw so far; in the past hours she had only known his anger, his misery, his loss. This was…dang it what was it?! Fuck it! _Fuck this guy!_

She didn’t dare say any of that, of course. 

Her unease grew louder and louder with every step nearing the end of the corridor. She hardly even noticed the offices they passed along the way. This wasn’t nearly as far as she had made it before on her own; she was more than anxious to see what else would come. Sammy would have worded it less kindly, but he too knew this of her. That was the precise reason why he didn’t speak any more than he had to, lest she panic and lose what little agency was left in her. 

It was brighter here; the size of the gallery ahead allowed for less shadow. Music mutely fuzzed through a nearby speaker and even though it was anything but sudden and had sung for them this whole time, she was still caught off guard. 

Music. Even as it mocked her with childish pep, it was an instinctive relief, at least mildly so. 

It was enough to finally oil her neck with courage and she slowly peered side to side. There was a wall just in front of them, but to the right seemed to be a large entryway connected to a staircase. To the left was hung a dull sign that spelled “RECORDING” just beside a room she could not yet see into; it was barricaded by a metal wall, the kind she’d see at an auto shop or at a closed mall store. The prophet chose the dead end. 

There must have been open space under the sheet she had not seen as it lifted slightly with a push of his foot. Then with a catch in his palm he heaved it upward and held it there to allow entrance. 

An old metallic rumble sifted through the air and drifted across the black field that lay ahead, their figures solid against a backdrop of radiance as it looked upon them. As soon as the rumbling ceased a thud came from overhead accompanied by blinding light. The sign they had passed now flitted with a dim, shivering glow. 

The arm she used to shield her eyes slowly lowered, passing over her face as a magician would to reveal a slight of hand. An expression of foreboding disappeared and left behind one of awe. 

It was a square tavern at least two stories tall. Like the rest of the studio it was fashioned from old wood swamped in dust and dreariness, and yet there was somehow less of both. It was less…dead, even as it sat empty of life. 

Three directions, one at a time, came to her. 

Forward like watching a movie screen from the back of an empty theater was a windowed box cut into the wall. It was far and indiscernible, but the woman could see a strange, tall silhouette within. 

A…familiar one. 

Right, a gallery. A small opening where a Bendy- oh god, let’s not think about that word- stand peaked far above as if a spectacle lay before them. She soon found there was. 

The left. 

The left side did something neither of them expected, in the end. 

Archaic microphones dangled from the ceiling like fairy lights over elevated rows of chairs. Their arrangement filled her with nostalgia even before she comprehended what she was looking at, but soon she did. 

The ghost of an orchestra was stringed with instruments here and there as if band members would reappear behind them any second to reclaim their thrones and rise the bells of their horns to the sky. They all-…

She mindlessly walked through the gate past her shepherd and rested two fingers gingerly on the violin; it seemed to sit wordlessly in tension, waiting to be plucked. 

Smooth. Scratched and even chipped, but…unlike every inch of this place, there wasn’t a single spec of dust that kept her prints from sticking to the surface of the wood. 

Realization once again rushed through her but in an entirely new manner. Taking a half-step, the human looked over her shoulder to see the ink man just…standing there, hand still raising the tin plates over his head while the other still dangled his lord’s manna. With his true expression again hidden, she still somehow knew- could feel- an aura about him different than before, as if he was showing her something. 

That was it.

“This is all yours, isn’t it?” 

He inhaled with a grunt- a laugh. He had laughed. 

“It has been _gifted_ for me to use, to use so I may sing the old songs that overflow my heart.” 

Despite these words sounding like they were ripped from a poetry book, she was dumfounded to see once again that he was a person. Unknown to her, it was all the more human of him how he was behaving earlier, how he relaxed. Once he had noticed that by Bendy’s grace- or power- the searchers were keeping to themselves, he had lost his whim. He lost it to whatever was found traced along the edges of his instruments. It happened so often and yet as it happened now, excitement ran through him with unmatched stamina. 

After all, it isn’t every day that someone asked him about what he spent his life doing, fulfilling his purpose to Bendy. Not even his spite of her could take that away from him, not even his newly broken identity that lay crushed in her hands. 

_She_ now had traced with her fingers the hymns these instruments begged to release; they were never before allowed anything but the worn strums of a cursed prophet. This was new, sharp, and strong like a finely tuned harp that stood next to an impassioned church choir, bequeathing them its youth. They begged for her, the old strings; he heard them do so. There was a small shimmer next to his lips as two dents appeared by each cheek. 

Now mind you, this woman had walked straight into torment and agony. 

She had seen the depths of unholy reanimation- of both this studio and herself. 

She had discovered within that same day that not only was her baby cousin still missing but that she had sought for him here for no reason at all, only leading to her pointless demise. 

She had been given no hint of mercy or hope that she’d ever leave; she hoped all the same, but something in her soul tried to console her as if this man before her was still truly enveloped in delusion- that this “he” would never help her leave, “set us free” as her captor had said. That her visions and his words were all machinations of pain and insanity as she lay dying on the floor, under the spotlight so close to the exit. Or worse yet, maybe it was entirely the truth. It felt like she was waiting for a sucker punch to wake her up already. And yet it might all be what really was. 

She found herself being held by the hand of a man with no memory into his abyss, a catacomb flooded with death. 

And somehow, impossibly, she smiled back. 


	11. His Truth, His Lies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.”_ – Ephesians 5:11

“Really?” 

He nodded in reply. 

As they sat together on the edge of the musicians’ platform, she turned her incredulous look at him into a blank stare to the floor that was almost wide enough to let in the certainty of his words. 

Almost. 

“Shit.” 

It was…a lot to take in all at once, to understate it. Heck, it was probably too much to take in over a whole lifetime, but here it was. And it was all her responsibility to accept- an unfeasible task; she needed help. 

“Let me just- let me just try to catch your drift here,” she started, raising her hands in a whirl about her head as if doing so could yank thoughts directly from her mind. He stayed silent and so she continued, closing her hands into fists even as they sat purposelessly by her chin. 

“So that thing I saw when-…” She hesitated once she had to describe this putrid moment. “-When you had me tied up, was- was ‘Bendy.’” It was pronounced as a statement, but she was obviously waiting for him to confirm it with a “yes” or “no.” She didn’t notice he was distracted by her fingers, the index and middle of each hand curling and uncurling twice to verbalize quotation marks. 

It unnerved her, but she assumed his quiet meant his assurance. 

“And,” she began again with words so heavy, so alien and magic that not even her own tongue could help her make sense of it. “…It… _he_ …kept me from dying.” 

Speech had come back to him. “Yes, dear sheep. He rained down upon you his life and his blessings so that you may remain as you are before me now.” 

And then there was a question that should have never been asked. 

“Why?” 

He turned away from her and tilted his chin upward, towards the cutout that peered at the two disciples from above. It smiled. It only ever smiled, but now it seemed to do so without secrecy, with concealment. Sammy’s gaze lowered to the ground with his unanswered prayers. 

“…I do not know.” 

For some reason, this was the hardest answer for her to swallow. 

There was a pregnant and awkward pause between them as they both attempted to absorb what little, confusing information had been left at their feet. It filled the two of them with uncertainty of their lives, their purpose. 

“When-…” 

Sammy’s knuckles clenched unconsciously. 

“When will he let us go back?” 

He had informed her just a moment ago in one fell swoop that attempt after attempt, not a single soul ever saw the light again- that the door only let in, not out. That Bendy was their only salvation. That somehow, Bendy would set them free. Now was the time for her to know _how._

“When we believe.” 

And suddenly, he heard a soft noise. By his side, the woman pulled her head into her lap and started to cry once more. 

“My sheep…”

His demeanor now was foreign to his past actions, unlike how he treated her before. He remembered when he touched her hand as she died, how she called for the shepherd- had asked for him to stay by her side. How they both from then on were at Bendy’s mercy together, not apart. 

He touched her hand again now as he was overcome with the love of his lord. 

It hardly remained for a second as she recoiled with a thick gasp, leaving them both cut from the sharp tension and unease with one another in this newfound communion. Their burning emotions could have singed stone. 

…

“I…I…”

She held her left palm gingerly as if she was protecting it- not from him, but from the candidness of this moment. Her face reddened with tears somehow became redder as her eyes searched over him, unsure of what to do- think- say-…and then…pink. 

Then she saw _pink._

The thing he dragged along with him down the hall, even sullied and coated like chocolate over a strawberry, still held a splotch uncoated from the black. She could see it now that she had pulled away from his side. 

There were many impossible things that day, but this was impossible even within his own answers. 

* * *

“My sheep-!” 

_“STAY AWAY FROM ME!”_

The woman had thrown herself backwards, legs split and shoulders raised, ready to run, to fight, _whatever_ was coming her way. 

He filled with shock and shame, a rug pulled from under his feet and leaving his body unsure of where it was. 

…He really was _that_ disgusting wasn’t he? That even the gentlest touch of his hand was enough to consume her with violent repulsion. 

He couldn’t believe that he had forgotten this most basic reality of the beings of the ink, that he had behaved as if the woman’s presence somehow made him human again- a terrible mistake. That could never be. The truth had returned to slap him back into his place. 

Even as second after second passed, neither of them would or could move from these positions. 

He dared, he dared to speak. 

“My sheep, I-…”

 _“Stop calling me that!”_ she bellowed, unsheathing her words like a knife. “What is that?! Where did you get that?!” 

What? 

Her glower deepened as she pointed with the full extent of her arm. 

“Where. Did. You. Get that?” she restated with a hushed fury. 

He looked behind him and saw the bag laying by his feet. He was alarmed; she knew something about it he did not, like it was an ancient relic of evil meant to never be touched. 

“…I can’t believe I thought I could trust you.” 

His whole torso twisted to face her in bewilderment. 

“That.” She pointed at it again, taking another step back. “That’s my bag.” 

She left a pause in the air, but quickly grew impatient for him to piece the puzzle together himself. 

“I left my bag _outside!”_

Sammy was frozen, completely unsure of what fueled this fire that was burning through her. She sighed heavily, weary with anger and pain. Her next words were gentler, but only for her sake. 

“If you know how to leave, I need to know, Sammy. I need to find him. I need to go home.” 

He looked back and forth, between the bag and the woman. Finally, he understood. 

“My sheep,” he said a fourth time, finding firmness and calm despite how she had thrown everything that had sat between their souls. She started to whimper and squint tears back by throwing her head to towards anything besides the man in front of her. She couldn’t fathom why he would choose to keep her here, to lie to her to such an extent, to make her believe that maybe a few fake acts of compassion could wash away every stain he left on her life. 

_Every. Last. Time. He had chosen to hurt her._

“Don’t call me that… Please…”

Once again, gasps for air amid cries made her wheeze. Once again, she knew she needed to keep talking as it was her last hope. Her voice was subdued and scarcely able to be heard. 

“You…you…why do you hate me?” He could see suffering in her scowl. “Why are you keeping me here?” 

Something he couldn’t name filled him and made him feel heavy and light all at once. It compelled his lips to part and his oily fingers to touch his heart. 

“…I don’t hate you.” 

She was unbearable, incomprehensible, and volatile; she was the epitome of it now. She tried to take away everything good he had here, every security he had in his faith. She had heaved an axe into the reflection he saw in his mirror, and now all that was left was broken glass fading into the rivers of ink; they only gave glimpses of who he had really been- who he was- and it somehow disfigured an already blighted existence. 

And yet, hate was no longer the right word. 

But this did nothing but rip open her old wounds. 

“You said _‘SACRIFICE,’_ Sammy! You said I was a _sacrifice! I HEARD YOU- I REMEMBER!”_

Her words echoed far from the recording studio. It reverberated into the pipes, and a shudder could be felt within the black blood. It spoke only the truth, and it begged the same of him. 

He had sins to answer for. 


	12. Pentecost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“And all who believed were together and had all things in common.”_ – Acts 2:44

_So. Much. For. Sacrifice._

His own confession was summoned from the past, a demon he no longer desired to do his will. A lot had changed since he said his first words to her, since Bendy left her in his custody. 

As she stood before him now, devoured by her heartache and struggles, for a breath he could do nothing but purse his lips and sigh in his own agony. For the first time since she arrived, he thought he understood. But since it had taken so long to, it had come to this- to her possibly irreversible distrust and ferocity. And maybe he could not yet fully comprehend it, but now he began to scratch off the mystery encapsulating her strange behavior. 

She was scared. She was scared of… _him._ After all, he was the first being to find her here…and he welcomed her presence by dragging and entrapping her with not even a second of delay. And unlike him, she just continued to wither and wither with each horror; she had no respite, no healing, no rest. 

She was a bird with a broken wing that would squawk and peck viciously because the very hand she needed was the one that had harmed her. 

He prayed that Bendy would forgive him. He prayed that he could undo the ever-tightening, strangling knots in what tied she and him together. 

Sammy had to start his penance now, while there was still time- before he would be sentenced for the evils he committed. There was much more to say, but here was a beginning: 

“I’m sorry.” 

* * *

Every part of her seemed to melt in disbelief. They were words that…contradicted him- him as the person he had solidified himself to be in her journey. 

Sorry? He was…sorry? 

No. No. He was trying to lull her back into his ruse. 

“I…I don’t…” Her brow furrowed so hard that her eyes closed, and yet she could still see the glistening man in her mind. “I don’t believe you.” 

_Step._

Her shoulders stiffened into her chest and she clenched her fists tighter. She wouldn’t look. She shouldn’t. 

“You…you speak only the truth about how I have harmed you.” 

Oh, how quickly did her commitment fade as she looked upon him again, her eyes beholding those of his mask- those flat spots of paint that seemed to look back. 

“I know I need to atone for my sins before it’s too late.” 

A slight, high pitch sound stirred in her throat as her lids stretched wide at this ominous promise. No- no, he couldn’t think he can trick her this easy! She wouldn’t let him do whatever he had planned! 

“Sammy- Sammy, I-!…” And yet she had no more words. He took another step. 

“There’s things you don’t understand- don’t believe about this place. I’ve taken that for granted. I’ve taken you for granted.” 

Somehow her expression of shock could only keep growing beyond what seemed to be its limit. 

“I’ve taken my lord and his mercy for granted.” 

And then it was clear to her she had no idea what was going on anymore. 

Sammy seemed…to be softening in the lights that reached him. He was still, and yet not rigid. The person was melting into someone new- or maybe this was him all along, broken free by human interaction and empathy. He now spoke in barely a whisper, enveloped by discovery and regret. 

“You’re not the first I’ve tried to sacrifice. This was not the first time…that Bendy has given me the choice to leave the path of wickedness.” His body trembled, began to _ripple_ the ink that wrapped around his soul. She barely, barely heard him speak. “…And maybe this time I’ll finally appreciate his miracles.” 

Finally, he moved ever so slightly. He shrunk backward in a tiny shrug, realizing there needed to be a clearer path in his story for her to follow. 

“You say that this is yours?” he asked, barely swinging a hand backward to gesture at the bag behind him. 

There was a pause before she nodded, unsure of the inquiry. 

“And that you did not bring it with you once you broke past our barrier, into his realm?” 

The language he was using disturbed her, but she nodded again even though she thought for certain he already knew these things. He had gone outside to take it, after all. 

Right? 

Inexplicably, his next mutter was filled with sadness. “I’m afraid that this was not my doing.” Before she could retort once more, he continued. “If I could leave, I would never come back.” 

That was true, and it began to seed within her. 

“No…no…I…I think you’ve been lying to me. You’re making that up…You just…don’t…” She eventually managed to birth the rest of her deepest fears from her mouth. “…don’t want me to leave.” 

“You saw him, didn’t you?” 

She gasped. 

“You saw our savior.” Another step. 

There was an overpowering feeling in her chest as she remembered, not just her dying moment but also of just minutes before when Sammy talked to her about “Bendy.” The way he described her own dying vision to her before she fully explained what she saw even to herself. 

It was real. God, it was real. He had seen it too. 

That was the foundation of her conspiracy theory- the idea that he was manipulating her by saying hallucinations were gods to make her stay when she fully well could leave. And now that this was gone-…

He saw her gaze laid behind him at her possessions- unknowing it was a blank stare- so he responded. “It was bestowed upon us by our lord. He sometimes brings gifts of the outside, as a reminder of what lies ahead. Such a thing as this, however…is very unusual,” and he continued before any more could be asked, beckoning into their minds a question. 

“I don’t know what you’ve done to find his favor.” 

Sammy shook his head, and small flecks of black dropped to the floor. These thoughts were besides the point. 

“Forgive me…There’s other things I know that you still don’t. Let’s not dwell on what neither of us comprehend.” 

Her eyes streaked side to side and eventually fell back upon him. Yes, he was definitely different now; It was like watching a snowman laying underneath a false spring sun. Yet all that she could say was an automatic, “It’s okay.” 

He sighed once more, his pant slightly wet in its release. 

“My lord…punished me harshly the first time I tried to offer a sacrifice.” He sounded fully haunted by this memory; this sentence alone stained her with dread as well, and yet there was more to come. “And then…my savior stopped me once again from shedding blood. But unlike the one before you, you were…” She felt his gaze over her whole body, observing the marvel of her existence. “You were already dying.” 

The discomfort that writhed into her like parasitic worms consumed any desire to speak. This wasn’t satisfying for him. 

“…Do you understand?” 

As she stood before him, it was obvious she did not. He had hoped she did so that the horrible reality of his entire purpose need not be put into words. It choked his heart; surely it would choke his throat. 

“This whole time I’ve been wrong about my lord. I thought- I thought I knew him, and he’s proven to me that such an audacity was what has cursed me this whole time.” 

He couldn’t fathom how he was still speaking. 

“I couldn’t see that this was not what he wanted of me.” 

He had wasted so much time. He couldn’t begin to unwrap the question of if he had grasped this sooner, if it would have changed how much he suffered- how long he waited to be freed. Maybe his past mistakes were conceived in boldness, but such passion had gradually spread through his veins. 

“But I think I know what he wants of me now.” 

The waistband of his overalls had started to overflow, dribble by dribble. As he took a deep breath, she observed his oozing slow and eventually cease. By the time he spoke again, the shine on his skin betrayed that his body was solidifying, returning to how he was before. 

A voice like a wisp of wind blew over her scalp and cooled her skin. 

“You’re here,” he whispered with childish wonder and amazement. 

“This is different. He let you live. Live as you are, without becoming as a I am- without becoming this horrible, aching blob of emptiness!” He outstretched himself, overwhelmed by this fact, and eventually fell back down to his humble stance. 

As she watched in total silence, the smallest movements in him spoke volumes upon volumes of experience, of suffering. He was a man stripped of everything he was and left only with the knowledge this is not who he should be. It was a life that was only worth living if one possessed hope; he was greatly cursed with such hope. 

And in her own matching ignorance of him as he had of her, she also somehow knew this. She hated what it meant. 

It meant that he was right. 

This genesis of faith was perceived by him as well, and so the prophet evangelized. 

“I wish I could explain his ways, his miracles, but…I know in the deepest crevasse of my soul that our exodus is _dawning.”_

Now this, this was a statement that needed a reply, even as it provided much more confusion than it did relief to the woman. She spoke with firmness, with resolve. 

“…How soon?” 

He titled his head very slightly towards her, his great height now looming a shadow onto her being as he stood close. 

“I cannot say. But…” His next words would either reveal her wisdom or her helplessness. “I think you may see the ones you love while they are still alive.” 

Her mom. Her dad. Her friends. Even Gabby. They were still out there, and always would be. 

Her family was locked behind a huge, unimaginably tedious barricade of time…

…that now seemed small compared to eternal purgatory. She tightened her cheeks, facing her coming tears with bravery. 

“It’s better than never.” 

The world was quiet here; not even the music in the hall could interrupt this holy commitment. As they were seeped in totally contradictory emotions- one with the elation of release and the other with the obligation of imprisonment- they had once again strengthened their unification. 

“My shee- my…friend.” 

And she saw he had reached his arm over the gap between them. Like before she had yelped, but now only lightly out of surprise rather than distress. Then, it refused to move any further; it would not touch without her consent. This time it was only for their mutual atonement, not for his selfish desires. 

It had taken so long for her to respond that by the time her fingers uncurled and stretched towards his, he had begun to retract his own in embarrassment. They both gasped at the sight of each other, as they saw foreign flesh so close to their own. And then, little by little, blood and ink awkwardly inched to find each other and joined in fellowship. 

She could feel that he was still dripping slightly, just a small wet touch somewhere leaking from his hand onto hers. 

“Sammy…I…I believe you.” She steadfastly looked his mask straight on. “I believe you.” 

The woman was so uneasy. She now knew she was not the first Sammy had tried to kill. She could infer that not only was it unnatural for her to be alive, but for her to not become as…as whatever Sammy was. And maybe he was lying, lying about how he was sorry for what he had done to her. 

But she still believed that their existence was now one in the same. 

“My dear,” her companion corrected, “it’s not me you need to believe in.” 


	13. The Giving Tree

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“A gift opens the way and ushers the giver into the presence of the great.”_ \- Proverbs 18:16

The moment of timelessness was done and left behind discomfiture. 

The two newfound cohorts amid the gloom were now left with no assurance of what action to take next, what needed to be done now that their cautious acceptance of one another was sealed; they had mundane living and surroundings that needed to be addressed. 

It was difficult to realize this as they stood together, stunned and stinging because of their resolve in fate. 

Despite being the one among them with the longest awaited, most harrowing and perspective-changing experience in this revelation, Sammy was the first to break free from the trance upon their souls. The man knew a search needed to begin. 

“You require things I don’t; I recall that much. I know there’s more than I have here.” 

She came from the trance as well, perplexed until he elaborated. 

“Your body- your human body. What does it need?” 

Normally such a question could be answered by a 1st grade science student, but trauma and exhaustion slowed her mind. Her breath rose her shoulders slightly as her eyes narrowed and shifted to her left in contemplation. 

“Water,” she finally stated, “and food.” The sides of her mouth pulled back in disappointment, realizing that the basics may now be a luxury. But if the necessities were indulgent, then these next wishes were ambrosia for her mortality: 

“C-clean clothes would be nice.” The more attention she paid to the stench from her jacket, the more she grasped it may now be clinging to her skin. “I’d love a shower or a bath, but I’m not sure how likely that would be. A bed or- or at least a blanket to sleep in, too.” 

One cheek pushed a wrinkle towards her eye as she glanced back at him. There was _much_ more she’d like to have. The impression books and movies had given her that people only crave the essentials when estranged from civilization was a lie, and it made her feel selfish. But what she listed out loud were the only items reasonable to ask of him, she knew that- and again, clean clothes and amenities were pushing it; who’d keep those things in a place of business? Who’d house them here and not take what they could with them when they left? 

She remembered the tin can she once held between her legs. It was a mild relief that probably gave too much hope for more to come. 

“You found that soup, so there’s at least some food around here. And, and maybe my bag _might_ have my change of clothes, but…do you know if you have any of those things?” 

There was a terrible pause until the lean in his neck became a nod. 

“I think that can be arranged.” 

And so he began to leave her and the bag behind until he heard a few taps behind his heels. Sammy half turned to peer back at the lost puppy. 

“No, you’re to stay here,” he instructed, “I don’t know how long it will be until I find what you’re looking for.” 

The woman immediately filled herself with panic. As far as she knew, there was only one of those half-man monsters that wandered the halls, but what if it came back? It seemed to leave her alone when Sammy was nearby. It wasn’t simply a matter of knowing what to do if it returned; it was a matter of never being near it again. 

He had correctly assessed this fear from her expression. 

“Do you remember what I told you on our way here?” 

Her lips smoothed over her teeth. It felt like forever ago, but it was an hour at most, if even that. It was such a strange phrase, however, that it came back to mind. 

“’Stay close until I tell you to stay?’” she pondered. 

“Precisely.” He turned his head, back facing her once more. “I will return very soon.” 

And with that, the ink man trudged out of the doorway and out of her sight. 

The dread that swallowed her heart was muted by the sound of footsteps etching the outside of the room. They led across her and then…upward. 

And then there was an echo as his last step led him into the recording studio once more. 

A brief search placed the entrance near the Bendy cutout that had eyed her this whole time, but not quite there. A few feet closer to the upper corner ahead was another opening; a film projector was aimed over her head like a machine gun as Sammy’s shiny chest deceived his otherwise camouflaged physique in the shadows. 

She could barely hear him say, “Watch.” 

_Pah-clunk._

A bright stream of light scattered overhead, barely skimming her hair. By the time she realized he was gone, he was already back- by her side. 

And then behind her. 

_Bumm…_

A low note tinged the air. It barely hung before it was interrupted. 

_Tunk._

She turned again, but not in time. 

_Bing!_

A tinny noise rang about. She barely caught Sammy set something down as he ran to the opposite corner. She didn’t know he could move this fast. 

_Ting…ting-a-ling-a-ding-_ and it continued the scale as a dreadful, loud noise accompanied the piano. His fingers orchestrated the fabrication of a black hole in the wall behind his back. Its birthing left her troubled, and it took a lifetime before he rose from the speckled keys, staring her way. 

It was eventually evident he intended for her to come this direction. She reluctantly did so, finding that the hole was in fact a room; it was a long, quite narrow hallway with some sort of metal equipment at the end, otherwise totally vacant of both items and any sign of life. 

Sammy awkwardly lifted his wrist to point into his creation. “This is my sanctuary. I come here when…” He seemed to be overcome with ponderance. “…I need to escape this world of distractions.” 

He lowered his arm and nodded very slightly, as if he had privately made a decision. “I trust you to make use of it if someone besides myself comes to visit.” 

Ah, so that’s what this was. It was a sanctuary of his mind now being allowed to welcome her weary, feeble body. And with this simple assurance, the woman felt her lungs release. 

“Thank you.” As she said this, she realized she meant it more than she thought, so it necessitated sincerity. 

“Thank you. I know that…” She peered shyly at his feet, having lost the confidence from before. “…that you don’t need to help me.” 

His reply planted within her. 

“I think I do.” 

* * *

And so she was sitting once again on the edge of the musician’s platform- this time alone-, surrounded by familiarity amid her new universe. It had been a very long time since she sat among a band, even a vacant one, and yet she noticed how she felt at home. 

_“Home…”_

Her eyes closed with the weight of loneliness and opened again; being the only lifeform in the room, there was no change in her surroundings to reveal how much time had passed in that blink. A second, a minute, an hour, a day? She supposed it didn’t matter. 

That fact in itself tried to eat at her soul, but she held the wisdom that she could not lose this fight; she forced herself back to her feet and pressured her heart to find distraction. She mindlessly wandered until she found something that might ground her. 

_Dmm…_

The strings of a banjo hummed softly at her touch; she felt the sharpness of them as they pushed into her fingertips. The woman was never a string player, and yet the stim of these instruments’ vibrations through her nerves soothed her and deserved her admiration. In her desperation, she smiled down at the banjo and strummed her knuckles over its lines so it would speak again. 

One of these bones stuck too far in between the strings and suddenly, the banjo sang so stridently. 

It was an inelegant, strong sound- like someone proudly said the first word of an impassioned speech and then nothing more. She literally took a step back in surprise; it was much louder than she intended or expected. And as she did, that note flooded her and brought to the shores of her mind a memory. 

Such a strange single note had reminded her how one of her favorite songs went. 

Soon the banjo was in her lap and she was clumsily fiddling with the strings, trying in vain to recreate the music in her heart. After a few minutes or so she finally found a chord; there were many chords in the song, but one was enough for her. She strummed it gently in a sloppy rhythm as she recalled the words.

The lyrics came to her with ease, even as it returned to her ears in an echo that made her self-conscious, even embarrassed- yet she kept on. It was the recreation of a children’s story for the heartache of adults; it told of how someone would give and give until every piece of themselves was no longer their own. It was a beautiful, thankless love that draped over the evils of being a martyr. Even with such melancholy, it was emotion that took her and repelled the tides of her desolation. 

And as she opened her eyes once the last, graceless strum of the banjo and hum of her lips drifted away, someone was there in beholden applause. 

* * *

Why, oh why, did she run the other way? 

That was the only thought on her mind even as a nightmare nipped at her heels. Reasonably, her instinct at the sight of the searcher was to run the opposite direction of where she saw it, but this path now led her to the halls Sammy had entered, not to _the safehouse that had explicitly been left open for this exact situation!_

God-DAMMIT, she could have easily ran around that thing instead and dove into the sanctuary. God almighty was she an idiot! Ah shit! _Shit!!!_

She abruptly, involuntarily leaped with the front of her body as her shoe slid backward in a trough of ink; it was over ankle-deep and spread from wall to wall, splinters of cracked wood arising like corpses of the river Styx. The splash her arms made as they failed to pick her back up was accompanied from behind by a low, wet groan. She dared to look back and found she couldn’t see the thing yet; she had turned a corner and by heaven’s grace held a big lead in this race. A horrible, stupid risk came to her mind. As she was overcome by panic and despair, she took it. 

Instead of returning to her feet to run once more, she stayed on her knees and curled into herself as tightly as possible, jamming her ink-coated sleeve into her mouth; its taste violently jerked her spine, but her hunch demanded it. 

In her peripheral, a dark smudge finally fuzzed back and forth. 

The woman looked so small in this endless hallway; she stayed in a praying stance amid the unnaturally cold fluid and its thorny gravestones. She shook and whimpered, trying to hold back thrashing and screams. 

_Hrughhhh…_

A soft but throaty voice traveled some meters away to enter her heart. It almost sounded like…like a man. A man choking on their own saliva and tongue. 

* * *

**Drip.**

As she forced her head to twitch even a millimeter towards this, she saw that the monster had disappeared. 

Her arms lowered, fists still closed but loose with the palm facing her, and her back straightened somewhat; as she looked into the dull emptiness the searcher left behind, she felt a tap on her forearm. 

**Drip.**

It was blood that formed a near-perfect circle as it fell onto her skin, birthing smaller cells of fluid over her hide like freckles of a scourge scattering from the source. 

No. 

No. 

It was too dark to be blood. 

**Drip.**

It fell upon her head. She could feel it trickle and trace from her hairline to her chin.

**Drip.**

It not only soaked into the shirt on her back, but it landed onto her neck and swam down the ridges of her shoulder blades.

**Drip.**

**Drip.**

**Drip.**

She was besieged by streaks of black that fell from the ceiling like a thick rain. Not only was it gathering- enlarging the pool underneath her legs- but it stained the walls, the ceiling.

Brushstrokes of smoke faded all around her, an aura of watercolors void of anything but a dreadful, murky wave.

**Drip.**

Out of the rotting wood, syrupy lines of black and white dribbled into reality; the edges slowly merged with the ink that enveloped her. 

**_It_** was enveloping her, the entire puddle an extension of its grasp. Whether or not it would crush her as she sat helplessly in its palm was up to chance. Somehow, she glanced up. 

The woman resembled a ghost more than she did a human of flesh and blood once Bendy stood before her. 

And as she gazed upon the very face that accompanied her death, its unholy smile seemed to widen, stretching towards the back of what could be considered a head. Darkness seeped little by little from its teeth to join in the pool that touched her skin. 

**Drip.**

Its open hand was almost as wide as her torso as its arm lifted before her, flecks of it falling to the floor. It then only stayed there...as Sammy had done before; it wasn’t going to touch her. This one action changed every inch of perspective. 

Thoughtlessly, she reached back towards the being that had saved her life, her redeemer. 

And as she touched its ungloved paw, it engulfed her hand- not in a hold, but a **_swallow._**

She remained silent with horror as she saw nothing- felt nothing- past her wrist, not even the small slits of raw muscle tissue that still ached from the ropes of her imprisonment. 

And suddenly, a weight. 

The sable soma of this being inched and crawled away, retreating as the demon’s “elbow” pulled back and claws reformed. None of it remained upon her fingers, but something else did. 

**Smack.**

**Smack.**

**Smack.**

The eyeless, sneering demon gave her one last glimpse of omniscience as it began to drag its appendages from the loch where it had poured itself, detaching from the pool to latch onto the upcoming floorboards. Before she saw Bendy melt into the vertical surface of the corner ahead, she mouthed in awe: 

“…Th-…thank…you…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not a necessary read, but here's a link to the lyric video of the song I had in mind if you're interested.  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1tM3DnFWLY


	14. Fallen Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“For I wrote to you out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to cause you pain but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you.”_ – 2 Corinthians 2:4

There was no life to be found, but there were signs it once dwelled here. 

The bag they fought over so passionately still held no impressions of her hands in its glaze, but it was joined upon the ground by things strewn where they never should be. One of the chairs was toppled over while two or more others had crept away as if they were taken aback by the terrible scene. The banjo’s tightened lines touched the earth, the barrier of strings separating its surface from the flooring. As it lay unnaturally upside down, one of its roughened, metal tuning bits laid severed from the body to rest in front of Sammy’s feet. 

He stared ahead as he stood alone in the room meant for many. 

Empty, empty, empty. 

* * *

_Empty._

Her parted lips glowed with a gentle white as the woman remained kneeling in the trough of tar, gawking at her trembling hands and the light that emerged from them. 

There were many things to consider after Bendy had left her alone with his blessing. The presence of a god swarmed her entire being and gave her what was long forgotten, leaving her motionless and thoughtless besides a single reflexive press of the thumb. 

Her phone rested in between her fingers, somehow whole and functioning- somehow in her grasp once more. It retained no signs of her previous brutalizing, not of its flight through the office window nor of its drowning soon after. It was the same as it was before the dark water stole it and its master returned it to her custody. 

Unfortunately, the same. 

_1%._

She awaited in sorrow for it die yet again. It was hopeless, not worth an attempt to answer the questions that agonized her; it would lead only to the sudden, cruel cessation of her search before anything of value came to be. It would have tortured her until…until…

She didn’t want to think how long it could be till she came home. 

She blinked, expecting it to turn black upon her return. 

_1%._

She blinked again. 

_1%._

She rested her eyes, knowing it would be gone soon. 

…

_1%._

Humans weren’t the only things granted eternal life by the ink. Soon she would know this could lead only to an equally immortal ache as desire and love tugged her back and forth in warfare. 

It buzzed. 

* * *

Steps eventually tapped into existence and at the entrance came to be papery trousers and slick limbs, barring the panels that framed her. No one would ever know if the breath from his fake lungs released relief, amazement, or horror as Sammy saw this haunting, ethereal display his had lord left for him to find. 

Before him was the woman led astray from the flock. She was letting herself wade in the overflooded chamber that linked the domain of music to the gallery of coffins and pentagrams- the place where she first met him and battled over her fate. The only sound here was the slow chant of drips from the broken pipes overhead. 

She was entirely still, except for…something. As he stepped forward in wonder, he saw there was an inexplicable flame upon her lap that stretched itself around each angle to encompass them; it seized her eyes and the stars they brewed were scattering down her cheeks. 

She wept. This one only ever wept, it seemed, for her own lost soul. 

The celestial radiance had enchanted her; her gaze stayed unblinking even as the ink sloshed in waves over her thighs when he crept closer and closer. 

He did not know if he interrupted something divine. He was drawn closer all the same. 

What did Bendy do here? 

…What did _she_ do here? 

Their faded shadows splattered around them, trailing and surrounding Sammy in ritual; they eventually touched as he knelt by her side, unknowing, uncomprehending of what magic leaked from her palms. The tips of her hair clung to the wall, ends sticky with the blackness as she leaned against it; it spread behind her like feathers in flight. 

Oh so slowly, a being resigned to the path of the fallen turned her head to look at him. She wordlessly reminded him through her spectral face the pain of the first trial Bendy required of him. She reminded him what it meant to let go. 

He dared to glance down at the beam in her grasp, and there were etched words he did not yet understand. 

But she knew. She knew. 

After all, this was light written by her own mercy. 

* * *

Once again, they marched together through the bowels of the studio, this giant beast of separation and baptism. Once again, he was a necessary tool to keep her moving. At least this time she was willing to walk; the man, however, found she stumbled so much and with such great unwillingness to keep herself upright that a simple arm lock was not enough to aid her. 

Sammy was exerting his strength into a hold that came across her back to grasp her right side, a wrap that placed the back of her head under the support of his armpit and ribs. He occasionally shrugged the woman back upward into him as her occasions of weakness arose again and again. 

She was still crying. To both his awe and frustration, the woman so far had shed tears more often than she spoke. In his life formerly vacant of such a basic form of expression, she must have bestowed upon him more than the equivalent of what he had missed over the years. But she had never kept it on for this long; there was always a break in the storms that brought about hasty, striking determination. 

He didn’t know if it was right or wrong, but had instinctively decided to seize her from the puddle of graves. There was something both glorious and deeply unsettling about the sight of her shining like a candle personified upon the old wood and the flow of spirits from the pipes. 

He had no idea what it meant nor what it meant to rob her of it, and he hoped Bendy would forgive him. 

Upon their meeting, at first the glow stayed in her palm and was gripped like a small book that couldn’t bend to fit her muscle, but as he reached for her shoulders to free her from the ink the glimmer entirely left them with no warning- not even one last flicker or fade. They were abandoned in the darkness, and the streams on her face no longer shimmered brighter than the black that chewed their legs. 

He remembered seeing letters before that moment, a flash of language. He didn’t know yet they were _literal_ letters, exchanges he always believed impossible within Bendy’s hold. 

There were some phrases among them that barely scraped his mind within the seconds he had beheld the scripture, rolling under her touch: 

_“Please.”_

_“I can’t”_

_“I need to.”_

_“Hate.”_

These were all words from her mouth that had unnerved him sometime before, materializing onto this surface she held. For some unfathomable reason, every time he saw he had questions for her was when he was frozen by fear, barely able to move and never speak. And so this fear was translated into reality by taking her away from this place, even with no chosen destination. 

Unknown to him, the woman now knew the lost boy was finally in the protection of her family once more. It had given her the strength to do the unthinkable. 

The kindness of the decisions that followed birthed callousness, loathing, and a hope that they wouldn’t miss her. She did this so no one would be stolen from them again. 

By the grace of God, she was permitted to cut her ties before her loved ones’ spears of affection fished back even an inkling of the truth. 

* * *

_“12 missed calls from **Mom** ”_

**Mom (9:37 PM):** FRANKIE PICK UP!!!!!!!!!!! 

****

_“2 missed calls from **Mom** ”_

**Mom (9:40 PM):** Frankie we found him!!!!! 

Me (9:41 PM): oh my god

Me (9:44 PM): really

Me (9:45 PM): oh my god

Me (9:45 PM): oh my god

 **Mom (9:45 PM):** We found him behind the grocery in the next town over

 **Mom (9:49 PM):** He’s scraped up on the knees and we’re taking him to the doctor but Gabby looks alright

 **Mom (9:53 PM):** He’s safe

_“3 missed calls from **Mom** ”_

**Mom (10:00 PM):** are you okay? Please pick up

Me (10:03 PM): Tell him I love him. 

**Mom (10:03 PM):** Come tell him yourself!!!! Were at home waiting

Me (10:04 PM): I can’t come home yet

 **Mom (10:04 PM):** What are you talking about? 

**Mom (10:05 PM):** Answer me

 **Mom (10:08 PM):** Frankie where are you

 **Mom: (10:08 PM):** stop being moody and come home. im sick of it. We miss you. cme see Gabby

 **Mom: (10:09 PM):** hes been asking to see you. Don’t do this now when we need you. Dont do this to him. 

Me (10:12 PM): I need to do some thinking, Mom. Having him gone made me realize some things. Im going to be gone for a while. Take care of him, take care of yourself mama

 **Mom (10:13 PM):** I dont understand

Me (10:28 PM): I hate you. I fucking hate you. You never understood me. Leave me alone. Don’t trry to find me. Ill come back when im ready

* * *

There was a subtle, green blink in the corner of her phone as the woman’s mother and many others in her old life desperately called out for her; eventually the search for the person they had known her to be would die down, but only after pushing itself to total exhaustion. Sooner or later that time would come, but until then it was a plague nipping at her wrist with a spiteful, verdant scream. 

Her entire existence was crumbling in the clutch of her hand this very instant. 

The cold of the ink man flushed over her temple as she leaned against his bare side. It pierced like freezing ice all the way to her heart, and yet it couldn’t numb it. 

She realized that by her own volition, the man with nothing was all she had left. 

He didn’t recognize that she was not merely too weak to continue moving on her own, that his purpose in this moment wasn’t only to keep her from falling to the ground again. He didn’t see that she was weeping into his embrace. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two things: Yes, the title is an Undertale reference. And also, I'm hoping for this to be the last excruciatingly angsty chapter for a while. I know I'm heavy on that stuff, but it's all kind of led to this; and hopefully _this_ will lead to lighter, more tender interaction. I appreciate your patience as I set this up. I find it unrealistic to have them enjoy and trust each other immediately and have tried to do my best to make such a development come naturally.
> 
> Thanks for 300 hits, have a happy new year! <3

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve actually gotten so much art that the character limit won’t let me put in all the links at the end notes! WOW!!!! Thank you, everyone!!! You’re all amazing and ilysm!!!! <3  
> I will be adding links to fanart as I post chapters, but please check the following tags. I’ve categorized things by arc/drabble so that you don’t get spoilers.
> 
> The overall tag for Hymns fanart is here:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/hymns-art
> 
> The tag for Hymns of Struggle as the first work (this one you just read!) alone is here:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/hos-art
> 
> Wonders of Heresy:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/wonders-art
> 
> Parables of Empathy:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/parables-art
> 
> Flickers of Faith:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/flickers-art
> 
> Tides of Longing:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/tides-art
> 
> Cares of Communion:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/cares-art
> 
> Dances of Duality:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/dances-art
> 
> A Rock in the River:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/a-rock-in-the-river-art
> 
> What’s Not Yours:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/wny-art
> 
> General/Crossover Art:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/general-art
> 
> Any art involving Gingie (the Joey of this AU):  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/tagged/gingie-art
> 
> And a commission of Gingie painted by my good friend Ace hehe:  
> https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/177183125008/aceofintuition-is-there-anything-quite-so
> 
>  **And here’s a playlist I’ve made:**  
>  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLY8pGhalYoCuHX0dLpmuY3jNYntmUjltg
> 
>  **Read this if you plan on being so kind as to make me art yourself!!!!** (Some of it applies to content not canon to Hymns but still applies here):  
>  https://pipesflowforeverandever.tumblr.com/post/176339938068/so-with-aces-permission-im-going-to-sort-of-add
> 
> Thank you everyone for your support!!!!!! I couldn’t do it without you!!! <3 <3 <3 Special thanks to the artists that have given me so, so much more than I could ever ask for:  
> Ace, Star, Silver, Gia, Metallic, Lil Griffin, Ufopilots, June, Halfie, Fern
> 
>  **THIS ISN'T THE END OF THE FIC, BY THE WAY!** Go ahead and read the next work in this series!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Love and Loss](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15266514) by [BallofYarn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BallofYarn/pseuds/BallofYarn)




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